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Fighting over Recto and Verso

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Over the recent weeks I have been twice in a skirmish on the correct use of the terms recto and verso, and I blame the dark days of early papyrology for this (there are articles on this topic; I leave it to commentators to share that wisdom). Before the dawn of papyrology everyone knew what the recto and verso of a manuscript page were: the recto is the front, the verso the back, identified on the basis of the direction of the text. On paper the physical aspects of either side of the page are (virtually?) indistinguishable; on parchment there is a hair and flesh side, though with well prepared parchment there is not that much of a striking difference. However, on papyrus there is the writing either along the direction of the strips of papyrus or across these. But still, recto and verso are terms based on the direction of the text, not on any physical aspect of the material.

Then there were papyrologists. And they described rolls, where the primary writing is on the 'along side' (normally the inner side of the roll), and where there is possibly secondary writing on the 'across side' (normally the outer side of the roll). Or other reused sheets of papyrus, where, again, the first text is along, and the secondary text across (normally). And the terms recto and verso were used so that they became often identical with along and across the direction of the fibres.
I think that this explains the odd labelling on the actual frames of P45, where the folio number is followed by a 'r' or 'v' which indicates not the direction of the text, but the direction of the fibres. In the transcription on the INTF website the same terms are used, but there correctly. This results in regular mismatches between the labelling on the frame and on the transcription. E.g. folio 16:

Label on frame '16v'; content John 10:7-25; transcription '16r'

Label on frame '16r'; content John 10:29 - 11:10; transcription '16v'

These days papyrologists tend to avoid the terms recto and verso (and rightly so, at least in their world), but within book studies (codicology proper) the terms have a rightful place as describing the direction of the text.

Physical description Parchment: Hair - Flesh. Papyrus: Along (→) - Across (↓)
Text direction (not related to the physical description!) Parchment: Recto - Verso. Papyrus: Recto - Verso (only really useful in papyrus codices)

It is only now with electronic texts and webpages that recto and verso have lost their relevance.

Stephen Emmel on The Fake Harvard John Fragment

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Building on Christian Askeland's argument that the Harvard Coptic John Fragment was textually dependent on Thompson's 1924 publication of the Qau codex (see The forgery of the Lycopolitan gospel of John) Stephen Emmel has recently done a great job on assessing "The Codicology of the New Coptic (Lycopolitan) Gospel of John Fragment"

I was interested to read it because in a comment to Christian's post I had suggested that "It may be worth trying to reconstruct the page (as a reductio ad absurdum)." Emmel has now done that in massive detail and shows how extremely implausible are the results, concluding that "No Codicological Reconstruction of H Is Entirely Credible". Emmel also agrees that if the Coptic John fragment is fake, then the Gospel of Jesus Wife fragment is also fake.

I would say that the end is nigh.

Ancient Greek Lexica

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We know that modern lexica are important for providing information on how modern scholars understand the meaning of words. And we know that ancient lexica are even more useful for providing information on how ancient scholars understood the meaning of words. So it is interesting to read through Roger Pearse's useful list and discussion:Lexicon: an introduction to the dictionaries of ancient Greek that survive from antiquity.

PS. We also know that such lexica may preserve interesting text-critical information - on one of which see Dirk Jongkind, "Some Observations on the Relevance of the 'Early Byzantine Glossary' of Paul for the Textual Criticism of the Corpus Paulinum", Novum Testamentum 53 (2011): 358-75.

A Greek NT Reunited (GA 699)

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Interesting blog post over at the British Library on GA 699 and the separate histories of its two parts (with nice pictures).

This is a notable NT manuscript partly on the grounds that it was (unusually) a manuscript of the whole New Testament - one of only around 60 extant that ever contained what we regard as the whole New Testament.

Birmingham Colloquium

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Hugh Houghton writes:

This is advance notice to colleagues and attendees of former colloquia that the Ninth Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament will be held in Birmingham on 2nd-6th March 2015.

The theme will be The History and Text of New Testament Commentaries. 

A call for papers and further details will be posted in October, but you are welcome to contact me before then if you have any queries or suggestions.

A Beautiful Error in Aland's Synopsis Quattor Evangeliorum

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In Kurt Aland's Synopsis [I am using the 4. korrigierter Druck 2005] a gorgeous error appears. In Mark 8:25 the text as printed reads και ενεβλεπεν τηλαυγως απαντα, 'and he saw everything clearly'. There are variants: παντα (not interesting now) and απαντας, 'and he saw everyone clearly'.
However, in the apparatus of the Synopsis this last variant is not given as απαντας (see e.g. in Alexandrinus), but incorrectly as αναστας, leading to a text that says something like 'and he saw clearly after he arose'.



Is the non-existing variant in the Synopsis an error of reading, influence from the wider context, or is this theologically motivated? Can we talk about its intention, its effect, and its reception history? Or is this an example of that most useful and most neglected of text-critical categories, namely 'errors just happen, get over it'?

On-line Lecture "Variants of Evil in the NT"

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Chris Keith (Historical Jesus blog) has uploaded my lecture  "Variants of Evil in the New Testament" from the conference on Evil in Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity. Thanks Chris for organizing this conference!


For my previous report on the conference, see here.







Why It Is Helpful to Include Accents in Transcripts

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A real summer topic (with an apparatus error in NA28 thrown in for good measure). When transcribing a New Testament Greek manuscript for exercise, I encourage my students to include accentuation and breathing marks. Of course this slows things down considerably, and accents occur only occasionally in the earliest manuscripts. But they are a source of information and consequently help us in our understanding of scribal behaviour. Let me give you three reasons, each with an actual example.

1) Accents and breathings help us see how the scribe understood the text. Take for example P104 (P.Oxy. 4404), 2nd century.



Twice in Mt 21:35 a relative pronoun is provided with a spiritus asper, and I recall having seen a number of these in Sinaiticus (I think it was in John's gospel). It may be that relative pronouns such as ον were marked out to avoid confusing it with a word-final syllable. There is no doubt that P104 wanted to make things crystal clear.

2) It can help us avoid collation errors. A good example is Ψ(044) in Mk 10:12. The manuscript is cited by NA27/28 in support of the reading αυτη. And indeed these four letters do appear before απολυσασα:



But look at the accents, αὐτῆ ἀπολύσασα, which is not quite like the text αὐτὴ ἀπολύσασα. A second look at the manuscript reveals why. It is not the nominative but the dative we have here, ἠ ταύτην καὶ ἐν αὐτῆ ἀπολύσασα. (iota subscript not in manuscript; we would write αὐτῇ).



The reading itself is not completely clear to me, but certainly it is incorrect to cite Ψ(044) as direct support for the reading 'αὐτὴ'.

3) Accents can help us to think about the prehistory of certain corrected passages. Here is an example from X(033), Jn 1:32. The text in its corrected form gives αναβαίνoν.



The transcript of the IGNTP John project gives the nonsense form καταβαινυν as the original version. One could question this on space considerations alone. But attention to accents steer us in the right direction. Why αναβαίνον instead of the correct αναβαῖνον? I think this is because the scribe of X(033) originally wrote the masculine participle αναβαίνων (which fits the spacing much better), and correctly accented. The -ω- was later corrected to an -ο-, yet the accent remained untouched (Tregelles transcribed the manuscript here correct back in 1850).

These are only a few real-world examples; I am sure there are many more out there which have escaped notice. I don't think there is any excuse not to include accents and breathings by the first hand in transcriptions when these occur only sporadically (such as P104). Admittedly, there are practical considerations in favour of ignoring such signs, given where we are in transcribing the corpus of NT manuscripts. However, tools that we use for transcribing should at the very least have the option to include these accents and breathings.

Greek Palaeography in Oxford

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This is a guest post by Peter Gurry who just came home from the fifth Summer School of Greek Palaeography in Oxford:

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Last week was the fifth Summer School of Greek Palaeography hosted by Lincoln College in Oxford. This year’s program was run by Georgi Parpulov and a small cadre of other instructors.
The program ran for five days and concluded with a review exam on Saturday morning. The students were organized into groups of nine with each group led by a seasoned palaeographer. The majority of time was devoted to deciphering various Greek hands starting with Codex Bezae and quickly jumping to manuscripts from the 8th–15th century (so almost all minuscules). My own group spent time with about 30 manuscripts and I assume most of the other groups were the same. The focus was decidedly on matters of palaeography and codicology, so there was very little translation.
The late mornings were spent at either Christ Church library or the Bodleian examining manuscripts of roughly the same time period as in our reading groups. We got to examine a number of Psalters and Gospel books but the highlight was seeing a book of patristic excerpts presented to Queen Mary I (“Bloody Mary”) that had been commissioned by the last Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury. At something like 2.5 feet tall by 2 feet wide, I was told it was the largest Greek book in the Bodleian’s collection.

 
The evenings were given to lectures from Nigel Wilson (Oxford), Hugh Houghton (University of Birmingham), Ilse de Vos (King’s College London), and Elisabeth Jeffreys (Oxford).
Nigel Wilson opened the series with a lecture on “The Rewards of Palaeography.” The main reward, he said, was filling in some lacuna in our present knowledge by finding previously unknown texts such as the sermons of Origen found a few years ago or the Archimedes Palimpsest, by finding an older copy of a known text, or of correcting the work of previous scholars.
 On Tuesday, Hugh Houghton gave an energetic talk on “Digital Editing and the Greek New Testament” that was meant to introduce the work being done on the Editio Critica Maior. He gave a brief overview of the CBGM and noted its role in helping establish the “earliest attainable text” (his term). He also gave us quick demos of the software currently being used at Birmingham to collate MSS and to construct variation units from those collations. If I heard correctly, the collation software is already implemented on the NT.VMR website, but this was the first I’ve seen of the additional software that they are using to demarcate variation units. One interesting feature I noted was that the software displays a warning message whenever the editor combines variants into a variation unit in such a way that it misrepresents one of the witnesses in that particular unit. It all looked quite impressive in the demo and I’m eager to know more about how it works. I was also interested to learn from Houghton that there are already plans to build a fresh version of the CBGM software at Birmingham as well. It will be worth watching to see what innovations such a project might produce; might we finally see a version that will allow others to construct their own local stemmata? Whether or not we can hope for such a development, there is clearly a very fruitful collaboration happening between text critics and computer scientists at Birmingham and we can all hope that continues. In all, I think Houghton did a great job presenting some of the developments happening in our discipline to text critics working on other texts. I left with the feeling that now is an exciting time to be working in this field.
On Thursday night, Ilse de Vos spoke to us on “Dealing with an Abundant Textual Tradition,” a talk which introduced us to her editorial work on the Quaestiones ad Antiochum ducem. This collection of 137 questions and answers about Christianity is extant in some 250 witnesses in Greek, Latin, Church Slavonic, Arabic, and several other languages. What caught my attention was how helpful she has found phylogenetic methods to be especially helpful in tracing the textual transmission of the Quaestiones. Although she hasn’t been able to root her phylogenetic tree yet, she has been able to identify a number of different manuscript groupings and even to connect some of these groups to various translations. For her this has raised the question of whether her critical edition should focus on reconstructing the original Greek text of the Quaestiones or should instead focus on the Greek text from which some of the more interesting translations were made.
The final lecture was given on Thursday evening by Elisabeth Jeffreys on “Editorial Problems in Byzantine Homilies.” Jeffrey’s is currently working on an edition of the homilies of James of Kokkinobaphos which exists in two remarkably similar copies, often agreeing with each other even at the level of punctuation. It struck me as a good example of the kind of skill Byzantine scribes could achieve.
The week gave me a much greater respect for the discipline of palaeography and a much better sense of how such work is conducted. Particularly with the Byzantine period where so many dated manuscripts are extant, I can see little reason for skepticism about the dates offered by those who specialize in this discipline. All-in-all it was a great week and I would highly recommend that those interested in textual criticism take part the next time around. Many thanks to Georgi Parpulov and the other instructors for putting on such a valuable course. 


Postdoctoral job opening at ITSEE in Birmingham

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Hugh Houghton who leads the COMPAUL project at ITSEE in Birmingham announces a job opening:
There is a vacancy for a postdoctoral research fellow to work on the COMPAUL project at the University of Birmingham, investigating the earliest commentaries on Paul as sources for the biblical text.

We seek a scholar with expertise in classical or biblical Greek, an interest in the New Testament and experience of working with electronic and online corpora. The principal duties will be the analysis of early Greek commentaries on Paul and the creation of a database of biblical quotations.
The research fellow will join an established team working in the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing at the University of Birmingham.

The appointment will start from 1st October 2014, or as soon as possible thereafter. The post is initially for 12 months, with the possibility of extension.

I apologise for the very short notice, but the deadline for applications is: 7th September 2014.

Informal enquiries may be addressed to H.A.G.Houghton@bham.ac.uk
Applications must be made online through the portal at https://static.wcn.co.uk/company/birminghamuniversity/internet.html
A job description may be downloaded from http://www.download.bham.ac.uk/vacancies/jd/44515.pdf
I should point out that this is a terrific chance to join a leading team of specialists in New Testament textual criticism as well as electronic editing.

See also this previous post.

Doodling in New Testament manuscripts: 0189

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Whilst preparing the slides for my paper at the BNTC conference for this coming Friday, I was delighted to find the oldest manuscript of Acts GA 0189 online. Normally I have some inkling of what is happening on a manuscript page, but what is happening in the upper margin on the recto (left of the page number) stumps me.


My best guess so far is that it is a dog with sunglasses.


Is there anyone with a more reasonable suggestion?

A variant unique to cited text

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When a substantial chunk of the Bible is cited in some ancient work and within the manuscript tradition of this work new variants happen, do they count for anything? Well, at the very least they give us another fresh set of stuff to study.
Take this example from Kosmas Indikopleustes, citing Acts 17:26, εποιησεν τε εξ ενος παν εθνος ανθρωπων (He made out of one the whole human race):


The last word on line 2 is εποιησε, line 3 continues with τε εξ αιωνος παν εθνος αν̅ων (He made from eternity the whole human race). ενος (of one) and αιωνος (of eternity) differ phonetically only in the added syllable /o/ in the latter. Phonetics made the error easier, context did as well: the whole of the context is devoted to arguing that heaven is 'eternal'.

Image is from Plut. IX.28, but there is also another Kosmas manuscript with the identical error. Until we find a Greek biblical manuscript with this variant, most of us will never see this one again (except for the poor student who is going to study the text of Kosmas's bible - any takers?)

An Amulet Referring to the Last Supper in John Rylands Library

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The Daily Mail reports today (September 3rd, 2014) that Dr. Roberta Mazza, Research Fellow of the John Rylands Research Institute at the University of Manchester, recently made a significant re-discovery in the vaults of John Rylands Library. She found a papyrus amulet from Egypt dated to the sixth century. The apotropaic text was written on re-cycled papyrus (traces of a grain tax receipt have been identified on the reverse side with multispectral imaging). The amulet contains biblical passages from Psalm 78:23-24 and Matthew 26:28-30 and others. The text includes:
Our God prepared a sacred table in the desert for the people and gave manna of the new covenant to eat, the Lord’s immortal body and the blood of Christ poured for us in remission of sins.
The news story claims that this is the first example of an amulet referring to the Christian Eucharist in the context of (apotropaic) magic, which I assume is correct. However, several other statements are erroneous (as usual when things get in the media), for example:
The papyrus contains some of the earliest documented references to The Last Supper.
It is also one of the first recorded documents to use magic in the Christian context.
Some Christians still use passages from the Bible as protective charms, so the amulet marks the beginning of a trend in Christianity [my italics].
An image of the amulet is available here.

Review of The Story of the Bodmer Papyri

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My review of James M. Robinson, The Story of the Bodmer Papyri: From the First Monastery's Library in Upper Egypt to Geneva and Dublin (Cambridge: James Clarke, 2013; ISBN 9780227172780) has been published in Review of Biblical Literature:







The conclusion of the review:
Stories of manuscript discoveries are always exciting, and this account of one of the most valuable treasure troves of biblical and other manuscripts is no exception. In my opinion, Robinson convincingly establishes the connection between manuscripts in the Bodmer and Chester Beatty libraries as well as a number of other collections, primarily Mississippi, Cologne, and Barcelona. Although Robinson’s investigations in Egypt are likely to be influenced by rumors and exaggeration and the exact extent of the “Dishnā Papers” is impossible to establish, his main proposal of a common discovery is thoroughly backed up with documentation and hard evidence from the manuscripts themselves.

On the other hand, the book is poorly edited and betrays many traces of several layers of revision and scattered updates, not only by Robinson, who “composed the book two decades ago” from several earlier publications and new material, but, more recently, also by K. C. Hanson, who edited and published the book (vii). The resulting unevenness is all the more annoying in a book that presents the reader with many names, dates, and details about the manuscripts, which are repeated back and forth, sometimes with variation, which creates confusion.

For example, we are told in the introduction (6) that the Vatican Library was given P. Bodmer XIV–XV (P75) in 2007, a piece of information that may give the reader a sense that the book is brought up to date. In the next sentence, another manuscript is mentioned, “the Savery Codex (then the Crosby Codex of the University of Mississippi),”
 Read the whole review here.



Ancient Textual Scholarship: Pseudo Aelius Herodianus

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The Partitiones contains orthographical and inflectional observations on Greek. A number of these words appear to come from the Greek Bible, both Old and New Testament, though the work in itself does not betray any ecclesiastical Christian connection. Under the initial syllable /i/, for example, the entry ιησους is glossed rather simplistically, as ο θεος. The work is ascribed to Aelius Herodianus (II AD), but apparently falsely so, according to the Neue Pauly. The Pinakes website lists his work under Herodianus Alexandrinus (also II AD), but I haven't seen any justification for this. A date of this work with its New Testament terms somewhere in the second century AD would be nice, but it is inherently unlikely that the writings of the New Testament (including Mark - Boanerges is mentioned) already had drawn attention from any grammarian. My own rule of thumb for dating anything is that if I don't have a clue it is likely to be fourth of fifth century AD.

Secondary literature on authorship, date or nature of the work seems absent (or at least I haven't found it; any help appreciated).

The Partitiones are potentially interesting because of some of the glosses and particular spellings, though these may have been influenced by liturgical influences or Byzantine linguistic updating. The explanation for Moses, μωσης is that it derives from μως (88.6), an explanation that would not work with the spelling μωυσης:
μῶς, τὸ ὕδωρ, ὅθεν καὶ Μωσῆς, κύριον.

There is clearly a relation with what Micheal Psellus (XI AD) writes:
53, 255-256
παρ'Αἰγυπτίοις γὰρ τὸ ‘μῶς’ ὕδωρ ἐστὶ σημαῖνον,
ὁ δὲ ληφθεὶς ἐξ ὕδατος Μωσῆς αὐτοῖς καλεῖται.

And possibly also with this passage from Joannes Zonaras (XII AD):
1.41.26-1.42.1
ἡ δέ “κάλεσον” ἔφη. καὶ παρήγαγε τὴν μητέρα, καὶ ἡ Θέρμουθις τὴν τοῦ παιδὸς τροφὴν ἔμμισθον αὐτῇ ἀνατίθησι, καὶ ἐκ τοῦ συμβεβηκότος ὀνομάζει αὐτό. τὸ γὰρ ὕδωρ μῶς καλοῦσιν Αἰγύπτιοι, ὑσῆς δὲ τοὺς σωθέντας ἐξ ὕδατος· ἄμφω γοῦν συνθεῖσα τὰ ῥήματα εἰς κλῆσιν αὐτοῖς τοῦ βρέφους ἐχρήσατο.

See also the spelling of Bethphage (accentuation as in TLG):
5.15
Πᾶσα λέξις ἀπὸ τῆς βη συλλαβῆς ἀρχομένη διὰ τοῦ η γράφεται· οἷον· Βηθλεὲμ, καὶ Βηθανία, Βηθεσδὰ, Βηθσαϊδὰ, καὶ Βηθσφαγὴ, ὀνόματα τόπων ἐν Ἱεροσολύμοις·

The spelling Bethsphage is interesting and common in the later manuscript tradition. But is this an adaption, is there variation within the tradition of the Partitiones, or what? It seems that without a critical edition of the Partitiones and a good study on the contents there is little we can do as yet.

Codex Climaci Rescriptus contains Aratus and Eratosthenes

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We've partially cracked the previously undeciphered 20 sides of Codex Climaci Rescriptus. They contain astronomical texts by Aratus and Eratosthenes. In the case of the latter this is the earliest known manuscript.

See further DeMoss press release.

Bible Odyssey Featuring "Alexandrian Text" and "Early Versions"

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A year ago or so I was invited to contribute to SBL's project Bible Odyssey which was launched about two months ago. I was told that this week my article on the "Alexandrian Text" is highlighted on the Bible Oddysey home page, together with an article on  "The Earliest Versions and Translations of the Bible" by Brennan Breed and a timeline of "The History of the English Bible" and a newly added videoclip on Early Christian Martyrdom featuring Candida Moss.


Just a week ago, John Kutsko of the SBL sent out a report about the two first months of the website, and it turns out that "People are very interested in ... 'life in first century Galilee' and 'how the Hebrew Bible relates to the ancient Near East,' as well as 'the binding of Isaac' and 'the woman caught in adultery.'” The last entry is written by my friend Jennifer Knust and we have worked a lot together on this topic for some years now. There is a related video clip in which Amy Jill Levine discusses the pericope adulterae, and another entry on the manuscript history of the passage (John 8:1-11) by another friend of mine, Chris Keith. Earlier this year, Chris, Jennifer and I contributed to a conference at SEBTS, the Pericope Adulterae symposium.

Kutsko continues his report on the Bible Odyssey webpage saying that many visitors come from North America and Europe, but that there is also strong traffic from Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Israel. Personally, Kutsko thinks the "Ask the Scholar" button (see the magnifying glass on the image above, or go here) is the coolest of all. Here they have received questions such as:
  • Why does God speak in the plural in Genesis?
  • Was John the Baptist an Essene?
  • How many scholars believe that Q existed as a source for Matthew and Luke?
  • Has the biblical figure of Satan evolved?
  • Why is ‘almah in Proverbs 30:19 translated differently?
  • How does domestic architecture vary in the Second Temple period?

A Newly Published Byzantine Greek Lexicon

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There is a helpful review at BMCR of a newly published Byzantine Greek lexicon:

Eva Villani, Il lessico Ambrosiano inedito ΑΝΤΙΧΕΙΡ (C 222 inf., ff. 207r-208v).   Milano:  EDUCatt, 2014.  Pp. 248.  ISBN 9788867800865.  €15.00 (pb).

The review (by Eleanor Dickey), includes translations of some entries which offer unparalleled new definitions, and this includes a couple of biblical words (here I am selecting from and quoting the review):


 Φ 5: φαρὲςτὸκαθαρὸνἑβραϊκὴλέξις,ἤγουντὸἀφωρισμένοντῷθεῷ,ἐξοὗκαὶφαρισαῖοςἓνσίγμα·
Φαρές (means) ‘pure’ (and is) a Hebrew word, or rather (it means) something set apart for God, whence (comes) φαρισαῖος (‘Pharisee’) with one sigma.’ [The point about Hebrew is correct, for the root of ‘Pharisee’ is פרש ‘set apart’.]
  ...
 Σ 22: σμίλαξεἶδοςδένδρουκαὶκλί(νεται)τῆςσμίλακος·
Σμίλαξ (is) a kind of tree, and it is declined in the genitive σμίλακος, feminine.’ [The scribe originally wrote εἶδοςβοτάνης‘a kind of plant’ and then corrected it to ‘tree’. The correction is interesting because LSJ gives four meanings for σμῖλαξ (accented thus in LSJ; Villani’s accent probably goes back to the manuscript, which has accents), of which two are trees and two other kinds of plant: holm-oak, yew tree, kidney bean, and bindweed.]
 ...
Τ 7: τύχηντινὲςἐπὶτῶνεὐτελῶνπραγμάτωνλέγουσιν,ἐξοὗεὐτυχῆκαὶδυστυχῆσκυτοτόμονκαλοῦσι,καὶοἰκοδόμον,τινὲςδὲἐπὶτῶνμεγάλωνἀξιωμάτωντάσσουσιταύτην·πανευτυχεστάτουςκαλοῦντεςκαίσαραςκαὶσεβαστοκράτορας,δοξάζουσιδὲπάλινἄλλωςἕτεροιτὴντύχην, τύχηνκαλοῦντεςκαὶαὐτόματονπερὶτὰἀνθρώπιναπράγματα,εἰσὶδὲοὗτοι τῶνπαλαιῶνφιλοσόφων·
‘Some people use τύχη (‘fortune’) for cheap things, whence they call a cobbler or a builder ‘fortunate’ or ‘unfortunate’, but others apply this word to great honours, calling emperors ‘most all-fortunate’. And others again think differently about ‘fortune’, calling ‘fortune’ (something that happens by) chance in human affairs, and these people are among the old philosophers.’ 
...
Σ 51: στέλεχοςφλοιός,κυρίωςδὲῥίζατοῦδένδρου·
Στέλεχος (is) the bark, but properly the root of a tree.’ [LSJ defines στέλεχος as ‘crown of the root, whence the stem or trunk springs’.]
 ...
Σ 39: σπεκουλάτωρστρατιώτηςβαστάζωνξίφοςκαὶἀποκεφαλίζων·
Σπεκουλάτωρ (is) the soldier who bears a sword and beheads.’ [LSJ gives among other meanings of σπεκουλάτωρ‘one of the principales or head-quarters’ staff of a legionary commander or provincial governor (whose duties included the carrying out of executions).’] 

NB Dickey's closing comment: "In short, this work is good and useful and provides scholars with the rare opportunity to explore a previously unknown text containing a significant amount of ancient material; it would be lovely if there were more dissertations of this type."

Hawarden Seminar on the OT in the NT

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Since the study of the OT in the NT often (always?) depends on the study of the particular text forms involved, and because I have fond memories of attending some of these conferences years back, I include this note here:

The Annual (Hawarden) Seminar on the OT in the NT The 2015 Annual Seminar on the Use of the OT in the NT will be held at Gladstone's Library Hawarden (http://www.gladstoneslibrary.org/) from the evening of Wednesday 25th to lunch time on Friday 27th March 2015. This is an opportunity for all those working in this field to come together to share papers, hear about any new developments and publications, and to network informally. Both established scholars and PhD students are very welcome, but places are limited to approx. 20.

If you wish to participate in this year's seminar, please contact the booking office at Gladstone's Library directly to book your room by telephone on 01244 532350 or by email to enquiries@glad.lib.org>; please note that you cannot reserve your place via the online booking system, as we have made a group booking. Please let the staff know when booking that you are part of the OT in the NT Seminar group, so that they can allocate you to one of the group's reserved rooms. The overall cost will be in the region of £175, depending on what "extras" you opt for (e.g. ensuite bathroom), and a small deposit will be required at the booking stage. When you have booked, please also email the seminar convenor, Susan Docherty on S.E.Docherty@newman.ac.uk> in order to be added to the confirmed list of participants.

Offers of papers are welcome, so please send the proposed title and a short abstract by 10th December 2014 to S.E.Docherty@newman.ac.uk>. There is no one overall theme to this year's conference, so all abstracts which relate to the general field of the OT in the NT will be considered. Proposers will be informed whether or not their paper has been selected in mid-January, and further details of the timings and running order will be provided then.
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